Café Zuppina: The market next door will add to Turkish delights in Lakeland

Eric Pera @ciapastryboy

Tuesday

Aug 7, 2018 at 4:40 PMAug 8, 2018 at 8:34 AM

The Market at Café Zuppina won't have full entrees, but it will carry an assortment of appetizers and side dishes, things like Turkish feta cheese, tzatziki sauce, tomato sauce, eggplant rolls and other goodies.

LAKELAND — Berna Nar likes to brag that she helped stoke Lakeland’s appetite for Brussels sprouts long before the little, green orbs became a trend.

Nar, along with husband, Erkan, opened Café Zuppina in January 2010, introducing locals to the dishes of her homeland, Turkey, as prepared by her mother. Brussels sprouts, by the way, turned up on Forbes’ 2011 list of top 10 food trends, right up there with artisanal honey, truffles and cake pops.

Berna Nar wants more people to try her veggies, so she’s opening a satellite store selling a host of foods like homemade, pickled Brussels and beets, grab-and-go soups and appetizers like hummus and stuffed grape leaves.

The operation is adjacent to her restaurant, 4417 S. Florida Ave. The Plant City couple anticipate a late August or early September grand opening.

Café Zuppina is small, seating just 26 customers indoors, and another 20 outside during fall and winter months. The size of their operation suits the Nars just fine. But they understand that they lose a lot of sales because of long waits for tables.

Rather than let quality suffer with a bigger restaurant, Berna Nar said she felt motivated to sell prepared items that can be packaged and refrigerated for convenience. The Market at Café Zuppina won’t have full entrees, she said, but it will carry an assortment of appetizers and side dishes, things like Turkish feta cheese, tzatziki sauce, tomato sauce, eggplant rolls and other goodies.

The store also will carry many of the ingredients Nar uses in her cooking, along with her custom, pickled vegetables and jams.

“Nobody can find these different products,” she said. “They have to go all the way to Tampa to find them.”

After taking one of Berna Nar's cooking classes, Martha Wall of Lakeland has pretty much mastered the restaurant's tomato sauce, which uses readily available ingredients. Still, Wall said she's eager to shop at the adjoining market for other favorites.

"I think it's wonderful that she is going to supply us with her fresh food," Wall said.

The market space is being spruced up with fresh paint, new floors and other decorative fixtures. The ceiling likely will be covered in wooden panels as well, giving the place a cozier feeling, Erkan Nar said. “It will be a vintage look.”

Fans of Café Zuppina look forward to dashing in and out of the new market for some of Nar's goodies, which otherwise are hard to come by without long waits for a table, or ordering takeout.

“Having a little (quick) market place is wonderful,” said Jessica Lawson of Lakeland, a Zuppina regular who is addicted to the restaurant’s Brussels sprouts. “They just almost melt in your mouth.”

Christy Birkhold of Lakeland, another loyal customer, has become a regular student of Berna Nar's cooking classes. But finding some ingredients like fine, bulgur wheat and Turkish coffee and feta cheese just isn’t possible in Lakeland, she said.

“It will be nice to have the market filled up with some of her European items,” Birkhold said. “Lakeland is going to be exceedingly lucky to have it.”

Eric Pera can be reached at eric.pera@theledger.com or 863-802-7528.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.